What needs to happen is that HTML needs to go back to being a mark-up language, and the web needs to stop trying to deliver an application-level implementation for every single website.
And we need to stop relying on JS so much.
And we need to stop relying on JS so much.
Given that even newspaper websites are now built as applications, we should accept that the web is an application platform (with one of those applications being displaying articles) and rework HTML as an application display language. And we need to start relying on JS more.
(Specifically, we should reimplement most traditional HTML elements and CSS as web components on top of a basic core web runtime. Then we could have a small standard for the core web that was practical to implement - just a very minimal layout engine and a JS interpreter - and everything else could be in the "component library" rather than something browser makers had to implement by hand. And then pages that want to use their own components or some other third-party components - which is most pages these days - could skip all that cruft)
The users want to get a document, not an app. That's what the web was made for, documents.
Admittedly even with .war format and other attempts, this was possible only for a brief time. Now we have a crop of readability converters because even print to pdf is useless most of the time.
The apps are mire likely used to hinder ad blockers than benefit the reader.
What feature of an article needs an app?
This could be what we want, but I can't help but think about what we've lost.
Just as it was with Java and Flash.
The web is getting smaller and smaller, being dominated by the bigger players (Google, Microsoft, Apple, et. al) for whom pushing opaque web standards and "applications" benefit only them as gatekeepers.
While it's still entirely possible for people to still build websites, search engines like Google don't prioritize them - leading them to never being discovered. 90% of the web is still the 'small' web and we can't ever discover them because they're not being indexed by Google (why should they? Most of them don't include Google's tracking js scripts ['analytics']).
The web was never supposed to be like this. It's turned into a massive surveillance engine for the big corporations.
I'll leave this here: https://wiby.me
I’m still not entirely sure what this is, but I visited, hit “Surprise Me”, and then spent a couple hours listening to/enjoying the retro-looking pirate radio site I got sent to, so, thanks
It's a completely valid view, and none of it is backwards.
What's backwards is trying to bend a system barely capable of displaying static content to create apps.
So because some websites do shitty things, we should all throw out the standard way of displaying information on the web? Guide me through that line of reasoning. Why are newspaper websites, out of all the websites, the ones which should determine how we do things?
My point is that if there was any category of websites for which a "document" model would work, it would be newspaper websites. When even those take an "application" approach, it's time to admit that the "document" model is a failure.
News sites are meant to be read, therefore they are "documents." They are also applications, because all websites, even static ones, are also applications. Once you add hyperlinks and external resources, it ceases to be purely a document.
Adding a script tag to an HTML page doesn't transform it from one to the other.
I remember the older days (2005-8) when we would dump a load of HTML from the server-side and kept javascript (for the most part) managing the layout and, not to mention, coding the painful differences between browsers.. even IE6 to IE7.
As Javascript (likely thanks to jQuery for starters) got better with AJAX and supporting different browsers with less code, it seems Javascript transitioned to be a owner of data with events and triggers. As for the serverside, transitioned away from returning HTML but XML or the common Json data.
Away from jQuery (or alongside it) we ended up with Javascript frameworks leading to bindings or automated refresh of data with template views, etc. Things like mustache.js to knockoutjs to angularjs.
Now - its React, with node package managers, even grunt... to name a few... appear to be needed tools for web development these days. Its like we are just HIDING web development to an application. Underneath it all still remains the basics of HTML, CSS, Javascript -- and its relationship with the serverside language.
I will admit. In the early days of HTML development.. I hated it! Its not the HTML side of things, but the tools I had to use like Classic ASP or supporting different browsers. If we do web development today like its 2005... with modern programming languages and web browsers, "old school" web development is a joy.
In the last few years, I jumped back to the serverside generating the HTML again. I can still do "simple page" applications with AJAX returning a portion of HTML, etc.
When I explain this reasoning with other developers, I get a confused look on their face. I try to explain to them that the backend code has not changed. Its just an extra layer of returning the data back as HTML, rather than Json. It sounds like more but all it does it organise your HTML templates on the serverside, rather than just having it all done on the clientside.
Since then I have added htmx to the mix, which IMO compliments this original approach. I have made successful projects with it though I dont think I have won the co-workers. I dont think its because its the old school way or htmx -- its just they are so accustomed to the modern approach of web development.
This is what I always bring up to web devs who think theyve captured the "write once, run anywhere" dragon
> We spent a decade rebuilding the browser by hijacking routing, manually syncing state, rebuilding forms and transitions in JavaScript to match native app expectations. Now the browser has caught up. It's time to stop the hacks and build on the web again, but properly.
We've been "holding the browser wrong" for the past 10 years.
Unless you're arguing that we should stop cramming app-like behaviour into a system that doesn't support it. Then I'm with you.
We can complain how much we want, but the stream of shit, web-shit included, cannot be stopped or reversed. Brace yourself for more.
This is the way I lean too. So much of what web apps do is just reinventing the wheel of desktop GUI toolkits, only worse, because each one does it in its own way, rather than all having a consistent look and feel.
I was on the mobile app side, as possible way to turn the balance around, but then everyone started shipping Cordova and Ionic apps.